Ep 65: Justice Postman on the Science and Art of Logo Design

Digital Marketing News Segment

To start off our news for this episode, we’ve found out that Google has now started collecting face data using “Face Match” technology on devices like Google’s own smart displays. Obviously, this raises huge privacy concerns, but Google is far from the only company to collect face for its own purposes. Face Match in particular is using the new face data so devices can tell which family member is using the device and automatically adjust settings in response. Google says that it does store facial data in the cloud, but also that it destroys that data once the company is through with it…which is unlikely to make consumers feel much better. What do you think? Is collecting data like this useful, or a step too far?

Over on social media, there are interesting reports that Facebook – like Instagram has already experimented with – may start hiding the total likes and reactions that a post gets. Facebook as a whole wants to try this out and see how it works as an effort to stop people from focusing too much on a like count, and focus instead on how much they personally like or dislike a post. It’s an intriguing idea, but it does have the potential to make social media marketing challenging in new ways. We’ll keep a close eye on this one.

Finally, in another bit of Facebook news, Facebook Messenger will be getting rid of its discover tab, where it recommended all kinds of brands, chatbots and other things that users could try it. This will make it harder for brands to get any awareness from Messenger users…but then again, it doesn’t seem like many people were using this feature anyway.

But now let’s introduce our main topic – an exiting interview with our team’s own Justice Postman, design specialist, who’s here to talk about logos. Here are some of the important points he brought up about logos, logo design, and where the general concept of a logo is today!

Popular Logos Always Sync with Their Brands

There are millions of different ways to design a logo! Overall, it’s difficult to give specific logo advice for a brand for one important reason: A good logo always represents its brand effectively, communicating key values of that brand in multiple ways. Some brands need more specific logos, and some may actually need less descriptive logos (Harvard Business Review explains this very well).

Overall studies have shown that descriptive logos tend to generate more positive responses, which means if you are thinking about creating or updating your logo, it could be a good idea to include some type of image as well as words. The logo also needs to be simple enough to easily show up in a thumbnail, profile pic, or social media post. Finding the balance here one of the key things that logo designers work on!

Buyers Really Do Make Decisions Based on How a Logo Looks

If there was ever any doubt about this, you can rest assured: Buyers do indeed make their decisions based in part by a logo. This often happens very early in the sales funnel, when buyers first encounter the brand as part of their search and make decisions about which brand to pursue first based on how the logo looks. Key factors for buyers include:

• Color: This is a consumer study, but it is important to note that nearly 85% of consumers say that color was their main choice when buying a product, and 80% think that color can increase brand recognition. “Cool” and “Warm” colors can evoke thoughts about how professional a business is, and even how trustworthy it is (for example, many professional companies use blue, which tends to make people feel more confident in the brands). Color also helps increase comprehension and memory when paired with words.
• Font: Font does indeed have an emotional aspect. Some fonts look far more professional than others. Original fonts can even be tailored to present particular aspects of your brand. Very small details can make a surprisingly big difference here!
• Shape: Humans naturally associated a lot of different things with shapes, so the overall shape of your logo is quite important. Round logos literally feel different than square logos, which feel different than triangles, and so on. All kinds of shapes can have different affects on how your logo is perceived.

You Can Put Your Logo on Anything – And Your Logo Needs to Be Ready for It

Logos go on everything these days, both in the physical world and the digital world. If you create a piece of content, your logo should be on it. That also means that your logo needs to be simple enough to easily reproduce, shrink down, and view across all sorts of marketing channels. This is one of the main reasons that companies today are redesigning their older logos, which have been deemed too complex for modern purposes.

Yes, You Can Redesign Your Logo

Sometimes businesses are worried about redesigning their logo, even when it needs to be updated. Many wonder if buyers will have trouble recognize their new logo, and suspect it might cost them some business.

The good news is that even major brands frequently redesign their logos or try out new logos! Far from losing business, they often use their new logos to create more publicity or highlight a modernized business. Apple, for example, has started using a multi-color logo in its latest marketing, which is a pretty big step away from the famous, simpler Apple logo.

Volkswagen updated their logo to focus more on electric vehicles and look better on social media. Don’t be afraid to make your new logo a focus of a marketing campaign!

If you have any logo design problems or questions, we would love to help! If you haven’t thought about your logo or even your general brand identity in some time, now can be the perfect time to begin. And to help you get started, our team has launched a 9-step digital marketing solution that includes a deep dive into just what your brand means, and how to effectively communicate through many types of digital content. If you’re interested, connect with us on social media @21handshake!

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